This is the wiki infromation for the older OLPC Pakistan. The mission of this Not for Profit Organization is to create an environment for OLPC, take necessary steps to ensure every child in Pakistan get the laptops and develop the Local Activities for OLPC laptops that could revolutionize how we educate the children. Our goal is to provide every children of Pakistan with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves.

It is unfortunate that in Dec 2006, the Education Minister (a retired general) didn't show any interest to OLPC mission to Pakistan. After popular elections of july 2008 a new government is in place and a professor is heading the Federal Ministry of Education. OLPC Regional Office in Islamabad was invited by the Ministry of Education to make presentation to a group of senior educational mangers on OLPC deployment in the country. A second presentation was done by Dr. Habib Khan to another group of school principals this week (April 24, 2008). These are all positive signs of a breakthrough any time.

OLPC set up its Regional Office

Assuming responsibilities as Director of Education for Central and South Asia, Dr. Habib Khan made an agreement with International Islamic University in Islamabad and set up the regional office at the main campus of IIU. Salman Minhas and Waqas Toor joined the OLPC team as developers and the localized work for Pakistan in Urdu.
The XO Laptop terminology is mostly localized by Afghan students of International Islamic university of Islamabad (Usman mansour Ansari and Sohaib ebtihaj Ubaidi)for two languages of Afghanistan: Pashto and Dari.

Excited laughter and revived- energy marked the air, of the old rusty school the first day of the pilot project began in slum area called Pir Wadhai located between the cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad). Eyes sparkled bright with excitement and gave way to numerous questions that sprung from everywhere. Students and teachers alike, all were eager to learn about the XO.
A phenomenal change was observed amongst the teachers and students. Their relationship seems to have taken on a friendlier stance. Where teachers would previously use sticks to control the students, they now peacefully bond to discover the OLPC together. Some other interesting observations from the project are:

On July 4, Dr. Habib Khan travelled to FATA upon the invitation of Director of Education. He spoke to all officers of the directorate on the constructivist theory of learning and how OLPC realizes this theory into practice. During the half day he spent with these officials, discussions there were a consensus to try out OLPC in some accessible schools of FATA. But they asked him to hold a day long awareness workshop for a group 20-30 senior Principals and teachers.

Pakistan Fata administered Area

Please note that FATA is a very sensitive area along the border of Afghanistan and is daily in focus due to its proximity to Afghanistan and the recent escalation in kidnapping activities, killing of innocent citizens, and burning of schools. Pakistan army launched a campaign against the terrorist and have silenced for the time being.

OLPC Pakistan Localization Efforts

Urdu localization was completed long time ago and put into use. Our last and comprehensive feedback came from both students and teachers that we are using in revising the current version to a better localized format. For this feedback, we are thankful to all teachers and student of the two pilot projects: one in the slum area of Rawalpindi named Atlas Public School and other was Mehfooz Shahid Model School located in the rural area of Islamabad. The review is now almost completed. Some issues that have surfaced to our attention are listed below:

Apparently Urdu hasn’t yet fully been converted into a scientific format. Consequently, kids, had problems understanding terminologies of computing in Urdu. We addressed this issue by using mixture of Urdu and English languages to make an understandable sentence.

Some words when translated into true Urdu are difficult to understand. These words need high level of Urdu vocabulary which is very rare among all educated in the country let alone children. Urdu spoken in Pakistan is a mixture of English and Urdu. Here again, we changed them to more basic colloquial Urdu supported by its English equivalent that are in common use. It enabled the child to appreciate and proceed with learning.